Business, Financial & Legal Posts - Page 55

Japanese electronics giant Sony expects a massive $489 million loss during this financial year, as company CEO Kazuo Hirai struggles to turn his company around. Meanwhile, Sony will spend up to $1.32 billion to try and restructure through March 31, 2015, and financial analysts believe it will take some time before Sony can try to recover.

Earlier in the year, Sony confirmed it would sell off its PC unit and TV business, along with laying off 5,000 employees. The VAIO PC sale will be completed by July, as Japan Industrial Partners will try to add some sales and marketing power to the brand.

Here is what Sony CFO Kenichiro Yoshida said during a financial call: "In previous years the restructuring was mostly within business units and in manufacturing. This time the difference is that we are quitting businesses entirely."

Popular e-tailer Amazon is hiring for a new distribution center that will be located in Newark, California, located 20 miles from San Jose and about 40 miles from San Francisco. The new warehouse will be located in a 574,000-square-foot building, and should open up hundreds of new jobs in Silicon Valley, according to Newark Mayor Alan Nagy.

"That's going to mean, I believe, a couple hundred jobs, which certainly this area can use," Mayor Nagy told the San Francisco Business Times. "I think it bodes well for our Newark residents that want to apply for a job there, that want to work close to home."

In the Bay Area, Amazon Prime members tend to receive product orders in one or two days, shipped from a distribution center located in North Las Vegas. Amazon has a research and development center already located in the South Bay, and with high demand of Northern California shoppers, a Newark-based facility makes sense.

One of the important parts of making sure people will buy items from an online store is to make sure that those who are unhappy with their items can return them easily. The flip side to that coin is making sure that once the items are returned the buyer gets a fast refund of their money. Apple has reportedly made refunds much faster for people who return items purchased at its online store.

Reports indicate that it now takes about half the time it used to for a refund to be issued. A company called StellaService says that people can get a refund from Apple in less than a week now. It used to take ten days to get a refund in the past.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting from a ComScore report, where it has studied Tumblr traffic noticing it has dropped from its peak of 49 million visitors back in December, to 42 million in March.

This is a 15% drop in three months of a whopping 7 million visitors. Yahoo purchased Tumblr just over twelve months ago for $1.1 billion, but since it acquired the company, Yahoo hasn't done much with it. Maybe we might see a change now that the traffic is beginning to dry up.

According to a report from Bloomberg, AT&T has in deep discussions with DirecTV for a massive acquisition that would see AT&T shelling out $100 per share for DirecTV, a deal that would be worth around $50 billion.

Bloomberg's Alex Sherman and Jeffrey McCracken said: "Under the plan being discussed, DirecTV management will continue to run the company as a unit of AT&T and DirecTV Chief Executive Officer Mike White plans to retire after 2015, said the people, asking not to be named because the information is private".

Diamond Circle, a bitcoin monetary ecosystem for the popular cryptocurrency, announced its pending launch of a new debit card. The Diamond Circle bitcoin debit card will only work with its cashless ATM machines, its own point-of-sale (POS) solutions or through the official Diamond Circle online exchange.

As more businesses try to jump into the bitcoin debit card effort, most others are relying on UnionPay or some other card payment network - so Diamond Circle may run into trouble trying to market its service. However, the company is all about providing safe bitcoin storage in which users have easier access to their cryptocurrency, so we'll have to wait and see how things develop.

There is a growing interest in bitcoin debit cards and ATM machines, such as the Xapo bitcoin debit card, though bitcoin supporters are concerned of possible market fragmentation.

Some reports around the web have been claiming that Mozilla has backed away from its plans to offer sponsored tiles on its new-tab page of the Firefox browser. However, a new report has surfaced that claims Mozilla isn't killing its plan to offer sponsored tiles, but will roll those sponsored tiles out more slowly than anticipated.

Apparently, some of the comments that Mozilla VP Jonathan Nightingale made were seen as a retreat by some, but all he really said was that the roll out would continue slowly. Many users of the Firefox browser were unhappy at the thought of having sponsored tiles on the new-tab page.

Microsoft has announced that it will open its first Microsoft Innovation Center in the US in Miami Florida. The announcement came on Friday during the start of Techweek Miami 2014. The facility will be state of the art and have all sorts of technology, tools, and services aimed at startups, governments, students, faculty, and the greater Miami community.

Microsoft's goal with the facility is to foster innovation, collaboration, and economic growth. Microsoft is working with Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami, Venture Hive, and other groups in the development and design of the facility. Once complete the Innovation Center will be used to host technology training sessions and workshops to help citizens in the area learn more about technology.

Netflix is the most popular video streaming subscription service out there and as such, people tend to get upset when the company makes changes. A price increase is going into effect in the US, Europe, and UK for new subscribers to the service. In the UK the price, increase will be £1 per month.

In Europe, the price for a monthly subscription will go up by €1. The cost of a month of service for new users in the UK will be £6.99. New subscribers in Europe will pay €8.99.

One of the big benefits of ordering items from Amazon is that in some areas they will actually deliver your purchases on a Sunday, greatly shortening the time you have to wait to get your stuff. Amazon and the USPS have announced that they have expanded that Sunday delivery service to more cities.